Fritinancy

All in the family

Sure, you’ve got your Mother’s cookies (founded in Oakland!) and your Dad’s Old Fashioned root beer (named in honor of founder Ely Klapman’s father). But they’re not the only kinship-name brands on the supermarket shelf.

Name in the wild: Lurline

I spotted this container ship as the San Francisco Bay Ferry was pulling out into the Oakland Estuary, and did a double-take when I saw its name.

The Matson Lurline, 2022. Photo by me.

 

“Lurline” is a storied name in San Francisco, in Hawaii, and in the history of the Matson Navigation Company, which was founded in Honolulu in 1882 by Swedish immigrant William Matson. But for most of its history the name was associated with passenger travel, not cargo. In the middle of all that history it was the name of two San Francisco heiresses. More about that in a bit.

On the brand trail: Oakland to Denver (and back again)

I interrupt my regularly scheduled posting—word of the week, monthly linkfest—to bring you some notes and images from my recent trip to Denver. It was my first out-of-California trip, and first non-driving trip, since May 2019, and the most time (four full days) I’ve ever spent in the Mile-High City.

On the Visual Thesaurus: Plus signs everywhere

Plus signs have become ubiquitous in branding: You see them in the names of streaming services (ESPN+, BET+, Paramount+, et al.) retail and restaurant names (Nic+Zoe, Flour+Water, et al.), and even NASA’s Venus probe (DAVINCI+). For my latest Visual Thesaurus column, “What Do Plus Signs Add?”, I look at the rise of the plus sign from its origins as a compression of Latin et (“and”) to its use in telecommunications and computer programming and as shorthand for “larger sizes.”

Access is limited to subscribers for three months; here’s an excerpt. (And keep reading for some blog bonuses!)

Retail watch: Three good names

Women’s-wear retailer Anthropologie is launching a new “inclusively sized” (women’s 16 to 26) collection today. The collection’s name is clear, simple, and elegant: APlus.

 

Anthropologie’s last foray into fashion sub-branding was the misbegotten BHLDN, which I wrote about in 2011. I am happy to report that APlus is a vast improvement: The capital A evokes the parent brand, and the “plus” in this context is positive rather than pejorative. My favorite label for this category remains Alexander McCall Smith’s “traditionally sized,” but APlus gets a high grade from me, too.

(For more on the use of “plus” in retail – you may be interested to know that at one time in U.S. history the category was called “stout” – see my 2015 post “Plus Is Equal.”)

Name in the wild: Blunts+Moore

Now that the sale, possession, and use of recreational cannabis have been legal in California for a full year, what’s happening with weed branding? Well, cannabis ads are still outlawed on San Francisco’s Muni buses, streetcars, and cable cars. On the other hand, I’ve been noticing a lot of outdoor advertising in strategic locations around the Bay Area: big, bold billboards near freeway on-ramps and bridges. Some are for companies that were founded before full legalization took effect on January 1, 2018, like Eaze (a delivery service) and Weedmaps (“a community where businesses and consumers can search and discover cannabis products, become educated on all things cannabis, review cannabis businesses and connect with other like-minded users”).

But one new brand caught my attention when I saw it on a billboard on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge: Blunts+Moore. Merely descriptive was my first thought. After all, blunt has been a slang term for “marijuana cigarette” for at least 30 years; the Random House Dictionary of Historical Slang connects it to Phillies Blunt*, a trademark in use since 1958 for a brand of inexpensive cigars.

But wait: there’s more. And also Moore.

Name in the wild: HODL FUEL

I spotted this truck a couple of weeks ago at the foot of Van Ness Avenue, near San Francisco’s Municipal Pier.

 

“HODL FUEL: Coffee For the Crypto Masses. #PayWithLiteCoin.” Note: Because it lacks calories, coffee is not technically a fuel.

 

Names in the wild(ish)

Some names I’ve noticed lately, for better or for worse, on my travels in the real and virtual worlds.

I spent a few days in Chicago in late April, where I spotted these Ostrim “sports nutrition meat snacks” on display at a Freshii quick-serve “wellness” restaurant. (Freshii is worth a brief sidebar. The company, which was founded in 2005 and is based in Toronto, has a peppy online presence and a brand-enforcing fondness for double-i’s: A limited-time menu special is called Biiblos – no, I don’t know what that means – and the store payment card is called Monii. “Let’s transfer energii!” chirps the copy.)

 

 

As for Ostrim, as far as I can tell, the product name is a blend of ostrich and trim, probably because the original “meat snacks” were made from ostrich. Today, though – 22 years after the company’s founding in Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Ostrim snacks are equally as likely to contain beef, elk, chicken, or turkey. Moral: Don’t box yourself in with a name that can’t grow with your company.

Also: Consider how your name might be misinterpreted.

Sounds like bone support and weight loss all in one - with surprise ostrich.

— Jessica Stone Levy (@BeautyMarks) April 28, 2018

 

Portmanteaus in the wild: Seattle and Vancouver

Last week I took the Coast Starlight to Seattle, a city I hadn’t visited in decades, and Vancouver, BC, where I’d never been at all. The journey was leisurely and scenic, the weather was mild and dry, and the political climate shift after I crossed the border was startling in the best possible way. I don’t think I’d fully appreciated how exhausting it has been, over the last 18 months or so, to live in the U.S. until I found myself in a country where sanity and courtesy appear to be the norm.

Oh, and I did some brand-spotting. The theme: portmanteaus, good and bad.

Names in the wild: Westfield San Francisco Centre food court (and beyond)

I had a little extra time before meeting a friend at SFMOMA to see the “Soundtracks” exhibit (highly recommended), so I took a detour through for the food court of the Westfield San Francisco Centre on Market Street, looking for interesting brands.

I scored right away. “Interesting” doesn’t even begin to describe Loving Hut.

 

There is a lot going on here.

 

This all-vegan fast-food café had just opened for the day and there was already a long line of customers. I stood to the side and marveled at the weird name – a cousin of Pizza Hut, maybe? – and that fantastically hideous logo.